the poor woman or anyone else got killed. Angie took a step back toward room 603. Then she stopped.
Even without the key, the elevator could be of use.
Angie took a single step inside. The perilous gap in the floor at the rear of the car was as she remembered.
There was a second slap from room 603 followed by the sound of the armoire doors being yanked open.
“Not here!” she again heard Chen say. “No one here! No one here!”
Angie set her red knit cap on the floor of the car, a foot from the gap. Then she grabbed one of two wheelchairs resting against a nearby wall, and ducked around the corner beyond the elevator, looking back toward room 603. A moment later, the killer emerged, dragging the old woman by her hair.
“Come out,
Angie kept perfectly still. Then she heard the man laugh.
“End of the line,” he said.
Angie could hear him moving toward her and the elevator.
Chen Su was still continuously whimpering, “Not here.… Not here.…”
Angie took a chance and craned around the corner enough to see that the killer had let the woman go and was now approaching the gloomy elevator car with little caution. At the door, he paused, scanning inside. Then he spied her bright cap and stepped in toward it.
Angie hesitated just a beat. Then she swung the wheelchair around the corner and began a sprint toward the car. The man was on one knee, picking up the cap and then peering over the edge of the gap in the floor. He turned when she was just a few feet away, but he was twisted and off balance, and his reaction was far too late. The wheelchair slammed into his mid-back, and he went down. A second ramming, and he was into the gap.
At the last possible moment, the fingers of his gloved left hand gained a hold on the edge of the steel floor … then, as Angie watched from above, he swung his right hand up and those fingers tightened over the rim as well.
Glaring up at her, not saying a word, he swung one leg back and was able to gain purchase with it against the brick wall of the shaft. He pushed himself up one inch … then another. Now, one hand was over the rim and flat on the floor of the car.
Even at such a disadvantage, his scar was menacing.
Angie had never physically hurt another human being let alone murdered someone. Dizzy and battered, she stared down at the man. Good or bad, she was thinking, there had been far too much killing already. Far too much death.
The killer’s leg continued to give him support. Now, his second hand was fully on the steel floor, inching forward.
Angie wondered how she could control him if she helped him up.
“Where did you put Sylvia’s notes?” she asked.
“No … notes.… She … had … nothing.”
The man’s expression softened. It was as if he had gotten a read on her and knew she did not have it in her to kill.
Another inch.
Angie knelt on one knee and stared into his eyes, trying to match his fierce, defiant expression with one of her own.
“Tell me again,” she demanded. “Where are the papers?”
At that instant, Chen Su appeared by Angie’s side. Dark blood trailed from the corner of her mouth. Without hesitating, she cried out and began stamping on her assailant’s hands again and again with surprising force.
“Wait!” Angie cried.
But it was too late.
The man’s right hand dropped to his side. One final blow, and his left hand went as well.
The killer made the six-story fall without uttering a sound.
An awful thud from below punctuated the silence.
CHAPTER 40
Not surprisingly, he began thinking about his sister, Louisa, and the promise he made to himself after her death. He knew from the moment the meningitis claimed her that he would dedicate his life to hunting cures for deadly microbes. He would become the Orion of the CDC or NIH, or whatever lab would have him—a one-man crusader against death. At the time, he never considered animal testing taboo.
At Louisa’s funeral, Moonshine, probably more golden retriever than anything else, sat vigil on the stairs outside the church. With the unexpectedness of her mistress’s death, no preparations had been made for the three-year-old’s care. But Griff knew the animal was happy, well trained, and his sister’s greatest love.
After the funeral, there was no question Griff would take the dog as his own.
From almost the moment Moonshine and Griff returned home, she was different. Her appetite diminished, then soon all but vanished. She drank only minimally, became lethargic, and never wanted to play for long. Eventually, when her weight loss became obvious and alarming, Griff took her to a respected, highly recommended veterinarian. The vet’s diagnosis of depressive disorder both shocked and saddened him. At the time, Griff had no idea canine depression was a real condition. But even more distressing, it hurt him to realize that Moonshine missed Louisa as much as he did, and that there seemed to be absolutely nothing he could do about it.
“What can I do to help?” he had asked the specialist on a return visit.
“The danger of death is very real,” the doctor explained. “You’ve got to find a way to make life fun for her again.”
And so Griff tried. He bought her toys. He took her to the dog park near his house every night. He hand- prepared gourmet food and even tried antidepressants prescribed by the vet. But nothing he did slowed Moonshine’s dramatic deterioration. More and more he feared for the dog’s life. That was when he called Andrea Bargnani—Louisa’s best friend, who had moved away a year or so before.
“I don’t know what I can do,” Andrea, a teacher, had said. “I saw Moonshine almost every day when I was living here, but since I moved, I’ve only seen her every couple of months.”
“You were Louisa’s closest friend. Maybe if you just came by for a day or so. Andrea, Moonshine’s going to die from this. I’m certain of it.”
When the teacher showed up at the house, the dog reacted almost immediately. She picked her head up and barked—once, and then again. It was the first bark that Griff had heard since the funeral, and the joy in the sound was apparent. Within minutes, the Shiner, as Louisa called her, was up on all fours, her tail flicking wildly. She nuzzled against Andrea’s legs and tried to climb into her arms, as though she could not get close enough. Griff had no doubt at all that Louisa was somehow alive in the animal.
Andrea felt the same thing. Even though, at the time, she was living in a small apartment, she gladly agreed to take the dog.
And so, Andrea Bargnani adopted Moonshine. Were it not for the holiday cards that reached Griff every year after that, regardless of where in the world he was working, he might have lost contact with the two of them. But reach him they did. For the first two years, the picture on the front of the card showed only the woman and the dog. Soon after that, a man named Jack debuted in the photo—a tall, broad-shouldered man with kind eyes and a
